Microsoft Azure Stack is an extension of Azure—bringing the agility and innovation of cloud computing to your on-premises environment and enabling the only hybrid cloud that allows you to build and deploy hybrid applications anywhere. We bring together the best of the edge and cloud to deliver Azure services anywhere in your environment.

These grants will provide researchers in these organizations with three years of free access to the Windows Azure platform, as well as access to technical support and client tools from Microsoft. This will enable researchers to easily access the power of the cloud from their desktop to explore a range of topics including the analysis of online social networks, a cloud-based geophysical imaging platform, computational chemistry and other eScience applications.

These grants are related to Microsoft's efforts bring technical computing to the mainstream with Windows Azure. To learn more about technical computing in the cloud, read this recent blog post by Bill Hilf, general manager, Technical Computing, Microsoft.